Tuesday, March 21, 2017

Recently, Pope Francis—speaking both figuratively and
literally—suggested that people keep a Bible on hand to consult with the same
alacrity with which they turn to their smartphones for entertainment, news, or
keeping up with the goings on of friends and family.

For sure, there are plenty of Bible smartphone apps that make
this a reasonable and practical idea for just about everyone. In terms of
outreach to millennials and teens, such tools are golden. At the same time, the
Pontiff put his finger on a troublesome issue that is, or ought to be, a
concern for ChristianChurches of all stripes: Engagement
with and appreciation of the Bible as the objective embodiment of the Word of
God is declining across the West and across all age groups.

This trend is true in particular among those who rarely
attend worship services or have stopped going to church altogether. It is especially
the case, of course, for those—young and old—who regard the Scriptures as simply
man-made storytelling or, still worse, as a source of oppression in terms of
homophobia and other forms of alleged denials of human liberty.

The Barna Group—in partnership with the American Bible
Society — has performed an extraordinary service with its publication of “The
Bible in America:
The Changing Landscape of Bible Perceptions and Engagement,” a compilation of
comprehensive research that is the fruit of 14,000 interviews with American
adults and teenagers over the past six years. The study features extensive
demographic segmentation, from teens to baby boomers and seniors, recording the
views of both believers and non-believers, churchgoers and “de-Churched”
believers, with respondents belonging to the Catholic tradition as well as to
both the mainline and non-mainline Protestant Churches.

These findings, derived from an extensive and highly nuanced
probe of attitudes and perspectives regarding the Bible and its role in private
and communal life, should prove to be a power tool for AmericanChurch leaders in their urgent task of
stemming a definite and alarming decline in Bible engagement in the United States.

Let’s be clear: love and use of the Bible has remained steady
among Church-goers and committed believers. In fact, thanks in part to a
revival of the ancient practice of Lectio
Divina among both Catholics and Protestants—a method, ultimately, of
reading the Scriptures as a gateway to contemplative prayer and mysticism—the
Bible has become still more rooted in countless people’s lives.

Much credit and deep gratitude go to the American Bible
Society for giving me the opportunity to
produce a multi-lingual series of Lectio
Divina manuals during my extremely fruitful years heading the ABS Catholic
Ministries department. Though Catholics continue to trail Protestants in Bible
engagement, the Catholic Church has made huge strides since Vatican II.

Yet, the Barna research sounds a dire warning: in 2016, the
number of American “Bible skeptics” has grown to 22 percent, with the
percentage of “Bible engaged” Americans standing at 17 percent. Back in 2011,
just 1 in 10 Americans was skeptical of the Bible and 45 percent of respondents
confirmed that “God regularly speaks to them through the Bible.” That is a huge
shift, although one tempered by the finding that, in 2015, 61 percent indicated
that they “wish they read the Bible more.” In 2016, 53 percent of Americans
believed politicians could do a better job “if they read the Bible more often.”

Nonetheless, the Barna research finds there is a decline in
Bible engagement in the U.S.
that is most dramatic among the young, millennials and teens in particular,
especially the un-Churched. In his preface to the study, Jason Malec, managing
director of ABS’s Mission U.S.,
does not mince words. Confirming that the Bible “has had a more profound impact
on our culture than any other book,” he warns that “if the current trends
continue, the Bible will certainly lose its place as our leading
culture-shaping factor.”

Barna Group President David Kinnamon attributes the decline
in use of the Bible and an attendant drop in Bible literacy to increased
skepticism about the “origins, relevance and authority of the Scriptures” and,
according to what he calls “a new moral code,” more people (even including
Christians) who “embrace self-fulfillment as the highest good.” This
orientation makes the culture more resistant to Bible-based faith that espouses
“God’s moral order leads to human and societal flourishing” rather than an all-consuming
pursuit of self-determination and self-improvement.

On the bright side, Kinnamon notes that “digital access” is a
boon in the form of “new tools and technologies that are making the Bible… more
accessible than ever before.” Of course, access without accompanying education
and guidance is no guarantee of a deepening of Biblical faith and engagement.

“If these trends hold steady,” the report warns, “there will
be continuing downward pressure on the number of people (especially young
people) who see the Bible as sacred” and the source of the deepest wisdom about
life and the nature of ultimate reality. The heart of the problem is that,
“increasingly, Americans are rejecting external sources of moral authority,
both spiritual and civic.” Still, “2 out of 32 millennials and 7 out of 10
teens hold an orthodox view of the Bible,” the report finds. Yet, lack of time
prevents one-third of millennials who practice their faith from reading the
Bible.

The study presents a checkered landscape. Again and again,
problematic findings are punctuated by hopeful signs. For example, 68 percent
of U.S.
adults “strongly or somewhat agree”—whether they regularly read the Bible or
not—that the Scriptures are a “comprehensive guide to a meaningful life.” Notably,
this conviction is strongest among African Americans, stronger among women than
men, and strongest—not surprisingly—in the South, and weakest on both the East
and WestCoasts.

Despite the contradictory findings, the report notes that
“many Americans seem to experience little cognitive dissonance between their
acceptance of the new moral code [endorsing the pursuit of self-fulfillment]
and their view of the Bible as a guide for life.” One could argue, of course,
that these particular respondents’ actual grasp of Scripture—beyond a broad, if
vague sense of appreciation for the Bible as a patrimony of Judeo-Christian
civilization to be valued and respected—is rather superficial.

What can compel people, regardless of age, to seek greater
engagement with the Bible? When asked, the number one response is coming to an
understanding that reading and studying the Bible is “an important part of my
faith journey,” followed by a “difficult experience in my life” and a
“significant” event in life, such as marriage or the birth of a child.

For ministers, pastors, and lay catechists, these are
teachable moments that must be seized proactively, windows of opportunity to
demonstrate the power of Scripture that often quickly close again. Church
leadership must be more vigilant than ever before. Above all, writes ABS
President Roy Peterson, the teachers of the flock “must be actively engaging”
the Bible themselves, “creating daily opportunities to be shaped and guided by
God’s word of life.” Only then will they “become living witnesses to the power
of Christ to transform the human heart.” Meanwhile, the Barna
Group and American Bible Society have given Church leaders a formidable arsenal
of actionable research.

Monday, March 20, 2017

There are many concepts with which
we philosophically seek to define and embrace the entirety of the human being.
One of these concepts describes the human being as a tireless, permanent,
eternal seeker of happiness because in the daily minutia of everything
we do and experience, we want to be happy. Everything we live, then, is
conditioned, has meaning, courage and truth in so much as it makes us happy.

2.- The Christian religious experience is,
then, for the happiness of the human being ...

Particularly, religious experience, as a model
of the mission, vision and values ​​in the lives of human
beings and social institutions, plays an important role in this search for
happiness. The different religious experiences and institutions must help to
make the follower and believer happy. The Christian religious experience,
therefore, must help us, the believers in Christ, to be happy. This must happen
so that the life and mission of Christ has, then, validity for his disciples.

Twenty centuries of the Church’s evangelizing
work in the world has not succeeded in showing and establishing the synonymy
and coincidence between salvation and happiness, between eternal life and
happiness, between the full and abundant life that Christ brings us and the
happiness that every man and woman seeks while they live.

This explains the
inconsistencies, hypocrisies and the permanent divorce between our faith and
our daily life. For, on the one hand and in the margins of our personal, family
and social histories, we seek the salvation that Christian religious faith
offers us and, on the other hand, further away and almost always in contrast
with our religious experience, we seek happiness.

This divorce, these
inconsistencies, and hypocrisies disappear from the lives of Christ’s disciples
when we discover that the health, salvation and eternal life offered
by God through His Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ, fundamentally coincide with the
ceaseless yearning for happiness that every human being experiences;
when we discover that, as was
beautifully expressed in the Second Vatican Council, "the truth is that only
in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light.” (GS22); when we discover that our life is illuminated and interpreted from and in the life of
Christ; when we discover that our search for happiness and humanization finds
in Christ and in his Gospel "the Way, the Truth and the Life" that
makes us happy, that is, that saves us; when we discover that our choices,
works, loves, sacrifices, renunciations, crises and achievements are understood
and acquire meaning from the life, the options, the passion, the cross, the
death and resurrection of this same Christ.

Thus, one can
form an understanding of the human and ceaseless search for happiness from this
beautiful and wise definition given to us by Saint Augustine: "You have made us, Lord, for Yourself, and our heart is restless
until it rests in You.”

3.- The search for
happiness and religious experience is lived in
context ...

But the pursuit of
happiness and Christian religious experience, like all religious experience, is
lived in time and in space, not in a bubble; that is to say, in historical,
social and cultural context. The pursuit of happiness is experienced by each person
in the here and now of their personal, family and social conditionings and
historical-social circumstances. That historical-social context is different
and changing in the history of each human being and of all humanity and,
therefore, produces and introduces nuances, interpretations, changes, and
variations in the notion of happiness.

To those who are here, to the inhabitants of
the planet Earth of this time in which we live in a context that we call: the
transition from modernity to postmodernity, it is a context and a historical
moment with globalized characteristics that make us how we are, think as we
think and act as we act today, unlike how our ancestors lived, felt, thought,
acted and hoped.

We can succinctly say that the man of today seeks happiness by exercising power
that tramples, crushes and oppresses. That today, we confuse happiness with the
pursuit of the pleasure of the senses as the absolute beginning and end and
regardless of the means to achieve it. We achieve this power and pleasure by
accumulating material possessions, goods, riches in a network of interpersonal,
social and regional relationships in which one’s power and pleasure grow as the
money one boasts of, manages, and accumulates increases. All this stands in
total and absolute opposition to the principles and values ​​that
emanate from the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth who taught us that we
are brothers, children of the same Father, who understands power as service,
finds pleasure in the generous surrender of one's own existence at the service
of our most helpless brothers, and who has the capacity and ability to share
whole-heartedly, compassionately, and harmoniously.

We find ourselves
in a historical-social context, moreover, that is characterized and lived in
the middle of conflicts and crises of the following types:

·Personal
(especially, the loss of absolute truths and with it, the meaninglessness of
life),

·Family (especially
divorces, separations, and new family models),

·Social
(problems in politics, labor, health, education and housing, injustice and
inequality, administrative corruption in governments and a thousand forms of
violence, inefficiency in public services, etc.)

·Regional, national and international (clashes between different political, ideological,
governmental and economic models, internal violent conflicts and bellicose
conflicts between nations, migration conflicts, displacements, famines, etc.)

·Natural (earthquakes,
hurricanes, floods, tsunamis, etc.)

All these circumstances of our current historical-social context push our
beliefs, our faith, our hope, our Christian religious experience to begin to be
lived less by tradition and more by conviction; less as a set of external rites
and displays divorced from our everyday reality and more like a lifestyle -
according to the gospel of Jesus Christ - that permeates our personal and
family lives and relationships and our social, political, cultural, economic,
national, and international institutions.

Our
historical-social context pushes and conditions us, here and now, so that our
search for happiness-salvation through our Christian religious experience is
"like one who is going to construct
a tower or who is marching into battle..." (Lk 14:28ss). That is, a reasoned, reasonable, free, informed and intelligent
Christian religious experience that allows us to "always be ready to give
an explanation to anyone who asks us for a reason for our hope" (1
Pet 3:15). Christian experience that becomes in us a fundamental
option of life for the person, the life and the gospel of Jesus Christ, until
we can shout like Paul of Tarsus. "I live,
no longer I, but Christ lives in me" (Gal 2:20).

5.-Christian
Happiness-Salvation ...

Throughout these reflections, I have been
showing what forms the notion of happiness for the disciples of Christ: to live
their own life, to live daily the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. To
live each moment of our lives as children of God and brothers of all in order
to establish personal, family and social relationships that enable and build
"abundant happiness and life" (Jn 10:10) for all. ...

6.- An invitation: to live the Christian experience without fear, without
apprehensiveness ...

The historical-social context described above,
in which we are pilgrims and live our faith and our Christian hope is, due to those who seek controversy or do not believe
in the Gospels, challenging. For "the
harvest is abundant but the laborers are few" (Lk 10:2).

What do we do as Christians in today's world and before the panorama so briefly
described here? Are we to become disheartened, discouraged?

Press on today, listen, one more time, to the
voice of Paul that encourages us, telling us: "We are persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed…
(2 Cor 4:9), because it strengthens our certainty of
happiness-salvation in Christ, who tells us: "Take courage, I have conquered the world” (Jn 16:33).

I
invite you to return to our first Christian vocation: that of being a light in the midst of darkness and salt
(Mt 5:13) in the midst of our
current circumstances made unsavory by inhumanity.

I renew your invitation so recently made to
all of today’s disciples of Christ by Pope Francis in the Apostolic Exhortation
"Evangelli Gaudium”: to live a newly happy, joyful and rejoicing Christian
experience. To be witnesses to the happiness-salvation that Christ gives us in
the daily routines of our personal, professional, family and social lives. To
live without fear of our baptismal commitment. To live with the joyful trust of
the children of God and, consequently, to be able to establish relationships of
compassion and mercy - as God loves us - with all the men and women within our
lives. To live as missionaries of the joyful hope and good news of the gospel
in the world today, as daily witnesses of the happiness-salvation that we find
in Christian life. As men and women who are happy and transformed in Christ,
with vision that - from and through the gospel - allows us to see everything
with the joyful confidence and hope of those who know that "the bridegroom is with them" (Mt 9:15), "always
until the end of the age" (Mt 28:20).

Thursday, March 16, 2017

March opens the fifth year
of the Pontificate of Pope Francis. Four years of a brief but eventful
Pontificate have passed, a Pontificate that has been innovative, fruitful,
renovating, and transforming.

How can we summarize the
personality and the Pontificate of Francis? What can we say about the First
Latin American Pope in the millennia-long history of the Catholic Church?

We should start by acknowledging and celebrating that he is a human being, very
human, deeply human – with all the
meaning defined by and contained in "human" and "humanity."
That is to say, Francis is a human being who, in his deep humanity, reveals his
deep divinity, a human being who reveals the image and likeness of God, the
imprint of our existence.

Countless deeply human
gestures and words have defined his life and work – words and works through
which he has been a vehicle of the divinity in his humanity and for all
humanity. In Francis, we have a Bishop of Rome
and Head of the Church who is above all else a "human" man. He is as
human as that man from Assisi,
recalled in the name our Pontiff chose for his Pontificate.

His profound human
experience and humanity lead him - like Jesus - to approach the weak, the most
needy; to address the causes of the marginalized and to raise his voice in
favor of peace for justice, peace for solidarity and merciful respect for all,
especially for the impoverished and neglected on Earth.

This profound humanity
reveals the "style" of Francis and, like the philosopher Protagoras,
we can say of Francis "the style is the man." His style is the
measure of all things, the measure, character, and seal of everything he is and
does, of his entire Pontificate.

Francis is a Christian man. He is
convinced of the causes of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which spring from the
recognition of God as Father in whom we are all brothers and sisters, with a
fraternal, merciful and universal love, in the way the good Father in Heaven
loves us. The authenticity of his Christian life is not an addition to his
person. On the contrary, the Gospel is the essence of his being and is revealed
in all his human behavior.

In the life and missionary
work of Francis, humanity and Christian life are not an incoherent,
self-righteous, and hypocritical juxtaposition. No. Francis is a human being
animated by the Gospel of Christ, a Christian in his deep humanity.

Francis is a Christian who
has dedicated his life to pastoral and priestly ministry, first as a Jesuit
priest, later as a Bishop in Argentina,
and now as a successor of Peter in the Catholic Church. His ministerial,
priestly, and pastoral works have demonstrated his life as deeply human and,
therefore, truly Christian.

In our historical moment,
the style of Francis is novel, contradictory, and shocking; the Gospel is
always novel, because the life of the Gospel in the world engenders
contradiction and because the logic of the Gospel clashes with the logic of the
world.

The novelty of the
Pontificate of Francis - here and now - is explained by the evangelical nature
of his Pontificate, by the honest attachment of his papal ministry to the logic
of the Gospel against the logic of the world.

This evangelical
authenticity has rapidly made Francis a spiritual and moral reference for all
humanity. This is evident in his vast influence in just four years as Pope, in
the interest he arouses around the world, in different societies and social
groups, in the media, in his interactions on social networks, and in every public
appearance.

Francis reminds us that
the Gospel of Jesus of Nazareth remains in force and - without having
participated as a council priest - that the Second Vatican Council - like the
Gospel - is about to be premiered, especially in this transition period of
Modernity to Postmodernity, a period so in need of the human and merciful
behavior of Jesus, of the logic of the Gospel and of the proclamation of the
Gospel in a genuine, simple, straightforward, and unambiguous manner, as Jesus
did and taught in his time.

As I said earlier, the style of Francis is a shocking style. The style of his Pontificate
raises blisters because it purifies, renews, ignites, and burns; it neither
marries itself to the status quo nor to an age-old, immovable, petrified
tradition, nor - as he himself has denounced – is it corrupted by the need for
movement, light, clarity, and renewal in the Gospel of Christ.

In his famous parable, the
Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard tells of a clown who found it impossible to
convince the inhabitants of a nearby town of a fire in his circus. Due to the
clown’s manner and dress, the countrymen thought it was a joke meant to attract
them to the circus. The circus burned.

Today, everyone agrees that, with the style of his evangelizing work, Francis
overcame the problem posed by Kierkegaard, because Francis comes and convinces.
His task is credible because it is consistent. Francis has shown that it is
possible to break the old, obsolete, and antiquated molds in which the Gospel
has been transmitted with the “smell of sheep,” in order to approach the men of
our time, especially those on the geographical, social, institutional, and
ideological peripheries. With Francis, it is evident that new wine requires new
wineskin, new ways of thinking, and minds and hearts that are sincerely open
and willing to embrace the ever-new light of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, who
renews everything, who changes everything, who transforms everything.

The substance and extraordinary richness of this Pontificate are evident in the
prolific works Francis has produced in such a short time. It
suffices to list here only a few milestones of his Petrine ministry:

An Encyclical: Lumen Fidei
(on the faith).

An Encyclical Letter:
Laudato Si (on care of the environment).

A Papal Bull:
Misericordiae Vultus (to summon the Holy Year of Mercy).

An Apostolic Letter for
the Year of Dedication to Consecrated Life.

Two Apostolic
Exhortations: Evangelii Gaudium (on the joy of announcing the Gospel) and
Amoris Laetitia (on love in the Family).

The formation of a Council
of Cardinals for the reform of the Roman Curia.

An Extraordinary Synod on
the Family.

Countless apostolic
journeys followed by multitudes.

A Motu proprio, "On
the Jurisdiction of Judicial Authorities of the Vatican CityState
in Criminal Matters," published on July 11, 2013.

A Motu Proprio, "For
the Prevention and Countering of Money Laundering, the Financing of Terrorism,
and the Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction,” published on August 8,
2013.

Three Consistories.

Canonizations.

The Apostolic Constitution
Vultum Dei Quaerere (the search for the face of God) on the contemplative life
of women.

We give thanks to God for giving us Francis as Pope in this time and under these
circumstances. As we begin the fifth year of his Pontificate, our hearts and
the bells of the Catholic Church rejoice. Why do our hearts rejoice and why do
the bells ring? Let us reply with the word of the poet: "For a man who is
a blacksmith, he is a soldier and a poet. For a man who carries three stars in
his soul: work, energy and dreams – the work that gives strength, the energy
that gives audacity, and dreams that give glories."

We thank God for giving us, in Francis, a renewed model of humanity in
Christian life. We rejoice because, in Francis there appears, for our time, a
model of divinity in humanity. We congratulate ourselves because Francis shows
us - in a simple way - that the life of Christ in us is possible, a challenge
that calls and challenges all. Francis reminds us daily of the value of the
Gospel, the value of Christian life, and the importance of "always
returning to the sources" to illuminate our lives and the life of the
world with the values ​​of the Gospel.

Francis has again made the
Gospel credible in the life of a man for all men. With his way of being and
acting, with his Petrine ministry, the Argentine Jorge Mario Bergoglio, as Pope
Francis, has become, in these four years of his Pontificate and as the great
playwright Bertolt Brecht said, one of those "indispensable ones" for
all mankind. He is one of those men who validate, who make
credible and kind being part of humanity, Christianity, and the Catholic
Church.